Lovestory
by SarahFromHell
Summary: AU: Sebastian and Kathryn aren't stepsiblings, and Annette doesn't exist. Multi-chapter fic following K/S relationship through high school, college and beyond.
1. High School, Pt I

She knows him by reputation. He's the premier heartbreaker at Manchester Prep, he seduces girls then dumps and humiliates them, and enough rumors have gone around about him by now (junior year) that you'd think most girls would just stay away, but it seems there's always another one stupid enough to think her love is going to be the thing that changes him. He knows her by reputation too: student body president, debate team, French Language and Culture Society, Philanthropy Club, National Honor Society, and a string of popular jock boyfriends from rich families. They pass each other in the hallways and sometimes fuck each other's friends, but they don't really talk. She would like, theoretically, to have him as a boyfriend—taking him off the market would be the ultimate score in popularity points, and he's more handsome and probably better in bed than her current one—but she has no intention of risking her reputation on the likely outcome of such an attempt. As for him, he thinks she's pretty enough, and she has a way of unbuttoning the collar and hiking up the skirt of her school uniform just under the administration-acceptable limit that sort of intrigues him, but at heart he doesn't like her, in fact he despises her and all she pretends to stand for.

Nevertheless he does have a habit of making a pass at every reasonably cute girl within eyesight, so one day he corners her in the school library and strikes up a conversation.

"Let me ask you something, Kathryn."

"Ask away, Valmont."

"Do you ever get tired of it? Being the perfect proper princess all the time? Don't you ever want to just let go, do something reckless and entirely for your own pleasure?"

"Is this a come-on?"

"Don't flatter yourself. Uptight society bitches aren't my idea of a good time."

"Oh no! My poor self-esteem is broken. I will now proceed to fall into your arms."

"Again, don't flatter yourself. I was merely curious." In a way, he is telling the truth: he is curious.

"Well, to answer your question, no, I don't. Because I have a _life_ and a _future_, unlike some people." She turns heel and walks away fast. He just stands there, surprised at the venom in her reply. She tells herself she'll forget the whole encounter, but later that day she finds herself being unnecessarily bitchy to her boyfriend, to the boring suck-ups she calls her friends. _"Do you ever get tired of it?"_ You have no idea, she thinks.

...

The next time they speak to each other, it's by accident. In the morning before classes start, Sebastian, still hung over from the party last night, enters the ladies' room by mistake to find Kathryn there in front of the mirror, snorting coke from what looks to be the inside of that tacky cross pendant she always wears. He isn't too hung over to say, "Well well," and smile at the ramifications.

"Get out, moron," she says, not looking at him.

"Hmm, what an interesting discovery. I wonder who'd be more pleased to hear of it, the headmaster or your parents?" He walks toward her, slowly, wearing that cocky smug bastard's grin she's always hated. By this time she's dumped the rest of the contents in the sink but her mind is still racing with fear, thinking of the stashes in her locker, her bedroom. He rests his fingertips lightly just under the edge of her collar and inches them slowly downward.

"Get out," she says in a low voice, "or I _will_ cry rape. We're in the goddamn girls' bathroom, how do you think it'll look?"

"I'm insulted, Kathryn. Do you really think I built my reputation on quick fucks in the bathroom before first period? Meet me after school, in our Literature classroom, where we can discuss the matter...more _deeply._ Til then, princess."

He leaves. She goes into a stall to catch her breath, still her rapid heartbeat, plot her next move. That's what you get for snorting up in a public restroom you idiot, she tells herself.

He walks to his first class with the grin still pasted on. That tight little ass is mine, he tells himself, concentrating on all the things he'll do to her body to distract himself from the growing sense of unease in his stomach. Because he does coke a little, at parties, when it's offered, and he knows other girls who do a lot at parties, but what he's just witnessed was something entirely different. In daylight, far from the whole party scene. A maintenance hit.

...

AP Lit is the only class she shares with him. They're both juniors but her classes are all Advanced Placement with the exception of Physics (Mrs. Keller, old uptight bitch and notoriously tough grader, not worth the effort), and his are all regular classes except for Literature, because although indifferent as a student he actually does enjoy reading and it pains him that most of his classmates prefer gossip magazines to Hemingway and are only there because it looks good on their college applications. He passes her a note: _room 802, don't forget. _He doesn't think she will, but he wants to see her squirm.

If she does, it's on the inside. She barely looks at the note before sliding it under her other papers and raising her hand to continue participating in the class discussion. Unreal, he thinks. He could almost still believe she's the perfect little role model he thought she was yesterday. Except—

(her eyes half closed as she raised the spoon to her nostrils, the ritual of it, her eyes meeting his in the mirror, a twisted form of intimacy)

—he's got a feeling now that she's much more of a bad girl than she lets on.

...

"I'm assuming this is what you want?" As soon as she comes into the room she locks the door and begins to strip, moving towards him with slow, sensual movements like she does this for a living. Push-up bra and thong underneath, damn. Even better than he'd hoped. She walks to where he's sitting on the teacher's desk, positioning herself right between his outspread legs. He licks his lips. But as soon as he moves to put his hands on her waist, she jumps back.

"Okay, ground rules. Number one, no photos. Number two, no anal. Number three, no bondage or weird S&M crap. Got it?"

"Ground rules?" He pulls her back and up onto his lap and holds her there. "You're hardly in a position to negotiate."

I'm in exactly the position where I have to negotiate, Kathryn thinks. She knows she'll have to hold something back from him as long as possible. She has no illusion that she is buying his silence; she is only buying time. She knows that as soon as he's gotten everything from her he'll get bored, and from then it's only a matter of time before he exposes her dirty laundry in the most publicly humiliating way he can think of. Because this is what Sebastian _does._

She decides she'll let him do what he wants with her body for now and just go on as if she hadn't heard him. "And rule number four, _no photos. _I mean it. I know how you operate, Valmont."

"Are you sure? You're really beautiful, you know. You could be a model." Sebastian chuckles and runs his hand up her thigh. "You've got killer legs."

"I sure do. Just like Marci Greenbaum."

(Years later, this will become a private joke between them. "You've got killer legs," Sebastian will say, and Kathryn will say "I do?" all wide-eyed faux-innocence. And he will take photos, lots of them, and Kathryn won't care, in fact she'll take photos of her own, Sebastian with his frowny face, Sebastian just after cumming, Sebastian closing a business deal while stroking his cock. And they will keep their photos of each other in an album in a locked safe-deposit box in their Manhattan condo, and take it out and leaf through all the pages together when Kathryn's company founders and later when Sebastian gets cancer and thinks he might die. But right now, Kathryn doesn't think it's funny.)

Sebastian wanted to coax a smile, to let the electric current of knowledge run between his and her eyes because he knows she knows. That's why he mentioned it. But Kathryn is having none of that. So he doesn't bother to reply, just slips the thong off, kneels in between her legs and starts eating her out. Kathryn's surprised for a moment—she didn't think someone willing to go so low as to blackmail a girl into sex would give a shit about anyone's pleasure but his own. But then she realizes, of course, that's part of his plan—it's not just about the sex for him, or even about bringing down the high and mighty Kathryn Merteuil, no, he has to _seduce_ her first. Make her come, make her beg for his cock, make her say her boyfriend's nothing compared to him. _This _is the campaign he wages with all the other girls and is now waging with her. A perverse part of her finds it thrilling. A commonplace thrill, though, she tells herself, and one she can't afford. But oh fuck is he talented with his tongue. No, she can't come so soon, not yet, not with him—to distract herself, she asks him how he got the key to this room.

"Screwing the Headmaster's daughter has its advantages." He looks up at her and gives her an evil grin. Oh yes, Lisie. Freshman at the time, a sweet vivacious girl who everyone seemed to like. When Sebastian was through with her, her father transferred her out of his school to a boarding school somewhere in Europe, to broaden her cultural horizons, was the official rationale. "So now she can slut it up with all the French boys," had been the assessment of Kathryn's second-in-command. Kathryn herself, of course, had sweetly wished her nothing but the best. Thinking of it now, she can't help but grin back, even though she knows it's the last thing that asshole deserves.

And she comes all right, hard, grabbing his head and shoving his nose in it, letting out a long continuous moan. He pulls his head away finally and gets up, only to push her against the desk and finger her cunt. She reaches for his cock and strokes it. He closes his eyes for a moment, lost in the sensation (and when was the last time _that_ happened? He's gotten so bored with girls), then whispers in her ear: "You want this hard cock inside you?" But she decides to play the bitch again.

"So you agree to my terms?"

"Yes, yes, whatever you want."

She stiffens. "I'm serious, Sebastian. No anal, no bondage, no photos. Do we have an agreement?" Way to kill the mood, he thinks, even though his cock is still rock hard.

"Yes, I already told you yes, you want me to write it in blood?"

"You can write it in cum," she says, sitting on the desk and spreading her legs wide open for him, "Do it," her voice pure command. He rubs his cock against her inner thigh, wanting to tease her a bit more, but the instant cock touches cunt something takes control of him and he can't, it's all he can do to get the condom on before driving it deep inside her, pounding the hell out of her tight pussy. And after he's come she only waits a few seconds before pushing him into a chair and straddling him: Round Two. They come at the same time this time, letting out groans and curses, anything but the other's name.

Her cell phone beeps. "That'll be my date."

"Tell him to date his right hand."

"Don't be ridiculous," already putting her clothes on. "Tell Mr. Bianchi you need a tutor for AP Lit. It'll make all this much easier."

"Ironic that I should need a tutor in the one class I usually do well in."

"Then start fucking up in it. Or tell him you want a perfect grade for your college application, so they'll ignore all the other classes—whatever, I really don't care. Don't mention names, just ask him to recommend one for you."

"I'm sure he'll be touched. Gimme your phone number." She gives him the number for her cell phone. "By the way, who's your dealer?"

"Blaine Tuttle." She shows what must be only the second genuine smile he's ever seen on her. "Just tell him you need a little blow. He'll be happy to oblige."

And as it turns out, though he doesn't tell her this until much later, he's enormously grateful to her. Because Blaine is a ruthless seducer of closeted jocks and frat boys, essentially a gay version of him, and he ends up being the one real friend Sebastian has in his entire high school term.

* * *

A/N: This story is a belated Christmas present for ResidentEvilChris, winner of the prize for correctly answering the trivia question at the end of "Hatefuck". Hope you like it!


	2. High School, Pt II

She tastes like silk and decay, he thinks, the fourth time they meet up. Silk because that is the texture of her, the way her pussy feels in his mouth and the way her lips feel on his cock. And decay because he knows by now that she is slowly killing herself, with coke mostly, plus alcohol when she can't get coke, plus a nasty bulimia habit. He wonders if her friends know. She tells him they know about the bulimia, it's common in her social circle, and by the way for such a vaunted ladies' man you really don't know that much about girls.

She tells him this in her room, a girly-girl's room done up in royal blue and white lace, the two of them lying together on her bed after sex, talking about nothing in particular. It is an inversion of his normal practice with girls. Normally, they won't shut up about their lives, and the challenge is to get them into bed with him—less and less of a challenge these days, they've all gotten so jaded as they grow older—but with Kathryn, the sex part was taken care of early on thanks to his little act of blackmail, and the challenge is in getting her to reveal something, anything, about herself. That, and anal.

They talk mostly about things unrelated to their lives: literature, philosophy, that sort of thing.

(Looking back on it: "God, we were such _nerds_ back then, weren't we? If those morons at our prep school could've listened in, that alone would've probably sunk us socially. Mr. Player and Ms. Popular having a long conversation about the kind of books that got assigned to us in English, as if we actually enjoyed them..." Sebastian will laugh and raise his hand dramatically to his forehead. "The horrors...")

She tells him very little. But he's not blind: he can see the half-empty bottle on her rococo vanity table, the bump of coke she takes just before fucking him. He feels...uncomfortable about it. He wants to tell her to stop. He knows she won't.

…

At first she thinks constantly about how to get rid of him. But over time she thinks less and less of it, becomes complacent, even starts to think that maybe he won't ever expose her and they can just go on like this, meeting in secret, a nice stress reliever for both of them until the end of senior year. She doesn't think of, much less hope for, anything more. But to hope for even as much as this is dangerous. She has to keep reminding herself that.

He teases her, sexually but also with half-ironic compliments and the notes he still insists, over her disapproval, on sending her in class. She doesn't know how much of it is real, if any, and how much is merely calculated to disarm her, but the effort to find out keeps her on her toes in a way she finds invigorating. He draws her out of herself, treats her as an equal in a way her boyfriends have not done, or maybe it's simply that she's come to see him as something approaching an equal, one intelligent person in the sea of upper-class book-smart stupidity that is Manchester Prep. Someone to talk to, to laugh with, to use as her confidante, which of course she cannot do. Bad enough that he knows about the coke habit.

He told her once: you know, don't you, that you could get rid of me quite easily if you wanted to? Just throw whatever drugs you currently possess into the East River, and if I try to accuse you of anything, I'll have no proof and it'll be the valedictorian's word against mine.

"I'm bored. Stop talking and fuck me again," she tells him. The distraction works, or seems to: they fuck, and he doesn't mention it a second time. But her hatred for him returns in full force.

…

In the end, it is his insatiable curiosity that betrays him. An evening at Blaine's house, smoking weed and half-watching some trashy TV horror movie. Blaine is telling him about his latest conquest, a repulsive-sounding macho school bully type who at first loudly proclaimed he was straight and now won't stop calling him.

"Once they go gay, they never go away."

"Hey, that's good. Mind if I steal it?"

"Not at all."

Blaine winks at him. "You ever thought of trying it yourself? Just to try it, I mean."

"What, having a cock up my asshole?"

"Doing anything with a guy. Doesn't have to be ass-fucking, could be oral, handjobs...you've done practically everything with girls, don't tell me it's never crossed your mind once to try playing for the other team."

"Did it ever cross your mind to fuck a girl?"

"More than crossed my mind. I did it, or tried to anyway—the spirit was willing, but I couldn't get it up. I was in junior high school and had done absolutely nada with guys. Shanice, god bless her, she was older and wiser than I was, she didn't laugh or get mad, just told me dead seriously that it was obvious I was homo and I should go out and make some guy happy. Thus making me into the man I am today."

"Touching story."

"Did you have a mentor like that? Some older woman who taught you all the tricks?"

"Not really. It seems insipid females have been throwing themselves at me ever since I hit puberty. It's funny, though, because I did get called a fag a lot in grade school. I always preferred the company of girls to boys, so naturally that meant I must be homosexual." Sebastian takes a deep drag. They both laugh.

A few more drags and one bloody, bikini-clad TV slasher victim later, Sebastian confides that he has thought about it. Primarily to see what his friends at school are so horrified by. "One has only to mention the act, and they practically run away screaming like a bunch of weak fucking pussies."

Blaine is silent for a minute. Then he says, "I bet I could make you come good with a handjob. A lot of guys tell me I get them off better than their girlfriends ever did. It's because we know the anatomy."

It is wrong, taboo—Sebastian can't help but be turned on. He pulls down his zipper in wordless assent. The experience is strange, disembodied, like touching himself but not. Blaine's hands on him feel good, better than those of most girls—he's right about knowing the anatomy—but as he gets into it, closing his eyes and breathing harder and finally coming, the images that fill his mind are all feminine. Petite bitchy girl in a black thong, tongue tasting like silk—god dammit.

He tries stroking Blaine's cock in return, finds it uninteresting and stops. Blaine doesn't take it personally or pressure him for more, just says, hey, we tried it, and reassures Sebastian that their friendship will not change. And it's true, their friendship remains the same as always—but he should've known that Blaine would not keep secrets from someone who's known him years longer than Sebastian has and who is also among his most reliable clients. At his next meeting with Kathryn, she shows up only just long enough to inform him that the game is over. "You say one word about my 'habits', and I'll tell everyone the real reason why you never settled down with a girl. Mutually assured destruction. And thank god for that," she says, breathing out a big sigh of relief. "I was getting completely sick of pretending to enjoy sucking your cock."

"Did you put him up to this?"

"Of course I did. Sorry if that hurts your little queer feelings. Oh look, he's all broken-hearted, he's going to cry."

Sebastian grabs her shoulder. He feels a sick pang in his stomach, not because of her little deception with Blaine, but because of what she said earlier. She acted like she enjoyed it—was that all a lie? Is she just saving face now, or was what he did to her over the last couple of months something less like seduction, and more like rape? "Don't tell me you were pretending to enjoy it. You loved it, couldn't get enough of it."

Did she "love" it? She enjoyed it and didn't. He turned her on, but she hated the power he had over her. In the end she's glad it's over, this is the all-important junior year and he was a sword hanging over her head just when what she needed most was to stay calm.

She looks at him, not smiling, looking more vulnerable than he ever imagined she could be. "I hated every minute of it," she says.


	3. High School, Pt III

The phone's ring tears through the silence in her head, cuts through her sleep the way her nerves scream at her when she has to go to school while still in withdrawal, or during the long nights of no sleep after she's worn out her current bed partner biting him and lacerating his skin searching inside his empty head and fragile body for something she needs desperately and cannot find. The caller ID tells her it's from the boy she used to call Valmont and now thinks of simply as Sebastian, although his name is still listed in her phone as "V. Tutoring". He wants sex, of course. Normally she'd be entertained, amused, with no intention of giving him what he wants but enjoying the verbal sparring. But right now all she wants to do is sleep. She puts the phone on silent, stares at it, then realizes she won't be able to get back to sleep anyway and picks up.

"Sebastian, what the hell are you thinking calling me at this hour?"

"'At this hour'? It's 11:30 AM."

Is he serious? Shit, he's right. Still rude of him though. Her head is pounding. She was out last night at a house party held by someone in the older crowd she runs with: the Euro-trash and male models/hustlers, who she fucks, and the Wall Street types she wheedles free drugs out of. She doesn't remember where the party was, or how she got home. She remembers sleeping with somebody: a tall skinny guy with long black hair, he fucked her in the ass. They exchanged names only to quickly forget them again, didn't exchange numbers.

"In any case, I just called to let you know I'll be asking Alyssa out."

"And I should care why?"

"Alyssa Branigan? She's your best friend, isn't she? I figured it's the least I can do to give you a chance to warn her about my tactics."

Kathryn sighs. She's too tired to think of a witty put-down, and also, she doesn't really give a shit. "Alyssa isn't my best friend. She just thinks she is."

Sebastian knows he should just let it be. He's done enough to satisfy his vestigial sense of honor and decency and can now get on with the business at hand, his latest project, fucking the meanest girl at school in every depraved way he can think of and then turning the photographic evidence over to everyone she's made suffer, a large crowd who will eat her alive, why it's practically a charitable act. Instead, against his better judgment, he stays on the phone with Kathryn: her not-best-friend. "Really? She's all over you like a leech at school. Care to explain?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't have to explain anything to you."

"Very true. On the other hand, you might as well. It's not like I can do anything about it. Mutually assured destruction, remember?"

And suddenly, inexplicably, she's wide awake and smiling. "Yeah. Mutually assured destruction."

She tells him the story of how they met and became friends. And as she does, he comes to realize what he never truly understood before: that this is not merely a hypocritical girl whose role model facade belies a healthy appetite for sex and drugs. No, her depravity goes far deeper than that.

"What you have to understand about Alyssa is, she's nothing but a little suck-up. When I first met her she was head of this thing called the Manchester Tribunal. It was basically a clique that worked together to get rid of people they didn't like. You remember that English teacher who got arrested for statutory freshman year?"

"Yeah."

"That was the tribunal. Alyssa was head of it, but only because their former leader had to leave for college and appointed her as successor. Actually it was nominally supposed to have a democratic structure, but Alyssa chaired the meetings and was trying to pack the membership with her close personal friends, just like the girl before her had done. Only from what I understand, the previous girl had some class about it, while Alyssa just acted like a really obvious dictator. And being that she's Alyssa, she had no understanding of why the other members resented her trying to run the tribunal like her own personal fiefdom. She brought me in because I was her 'type'. Not that kind of type, you idiot."

"Did I say a word?"

"I know what you were thinking."

"Has it occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, you know nothing at all?"

"Oh okay, so you're _not_ sex-obsessed. Right. So anyway, Alyssa admired me and thought there should be more people like me around to represent the school, as opposed to the socially awkward nerds and D-student trust-fund jerkoffs. You can see her point. But the Manchester Tribunal was a secret society with influence over administration hirings and firings, that met one or two evenings per month in the second auditorium when it wasn't being used for rehearsals. It didn't take a genius to see how _that_ would end. So I got her to see the light, she had a big crisis of conscience and quit the organization, I put in a little call and just after that the headmaster turned up and was very shocked that all this was going on. The newer members got off pretty light, because we hadn't actually done anything, but the major players were all expelled. So after that Alyssa was pathetically grateful to me for defending her to the administration, and pretty soon her friends were all more my friends than hers, because let's face it, I'm nice and Alyssa's a snobby bitch. The girl's like a stupid version of me. She doesn't have my intelligence so she sleeps with her teachers for grades, and she doesn't know how to be nice to other girls so she just kind of intimidates them into liking her. But she has her uses. Or at least she did."

"You're assuming I asked her out for sadistic purposes. What makes you think I'm not genuinely infatuated with her?"

"Because you told me first. Duh."

They stay on the phone for hours. After finally hanging up, he picks up the leather-bound journal lying on his desk and absentmindedly doodles a cross pendant on the nearest blank page. He writes:

_There has never been a single person in history as two faced as Kathryn. Stunning to look at and exciting to be near and cold as ice. She cares about absolutely no one but herself. This girl has brought self-absorption to an art form. She believes in nothing and laughs in the face of sadness, faith, and sincerity. A person observing her and having seen the damage she's done to so many lives would most likely classify her as evil. She scoffs at any and every type of religion all the while manipulating others by using the idea of being religious to her advantage. She'll steal mentally and emotionally from anyone who crosses her path, spends night after night in drunken, drug-induced debauchery but lives the other life as the consummate angel. She is in a sense brilliant as evidence by the fact that she has indeed completely fooled every person she has ever had to except me. In fact we are very similar people. _

_..._

They talk on the phone regularly after that, and even meet up on occasion. Not as lovers, but as friends. "Mutually assured destruction" becomes a code word between them. He tells her about his conquests; she tells him about her friendships. They flirt sometimes, too, but it isn't really about that.

They talk about Alyssa. The seduction is proceeding basically as planned, if slowly.

"Fuck her yet?"

"Working on it."

"Loser."

"Blow me," he says, smiling into the phone.

"Why don't you get her to? Oh, that's right."

"Because she's less of a slut than you?"

"Gee, with sweet lines like that, I can see why all the girls fall in love with you."

"I think you know why. From personal experience."

Kathryn laughs. "I've had bigger."

"Liar."

"How would you know if I'm lying or not? Maybe I should tell Blaine to give it another try."

"Or maybe you should shut the fuck up. I have plans for that girl, Kathryn. Big plans."

"Oh really?" He hears a shifting, a rustling, on the other end of the line. "What kind of plans?"

He chuckles. "Jealous are we? I'm going to fuck her better than I ever fucked you. I'm going to fuck her so hard she won't be able to see straight for days."

"Tell me," she says, breathing hard. Sebastian pauses, hit again by just how sick this all is. Her best friend.

It doesn't stop him. "First I'm going to pin her to the bed and finger her clit til she begs me to let her come."

"Mmm-hm. And do you play with her tits?"

"Yeah. I take out those pretty D-cup titties and bite the nipples til she squirms. Then I take out my cock and rub it in between 'em. And then I grab her by the hair and make her deep throat every inch of it like the little whore she is." His free hand pumps his cock as he speaks, imagining the whole scenario play out like a movie, which is what he plans to turn it into anyway. This is his favorite part of any seduction—the first fuck, girl down on her knees sucking him off and loving it, taking his cock in her cunt and loving it, every trace of bullshit modesty gone. His free hand works harder.

"And do you come in her mouth?"

"No, I take it out and the last second and spray it all over her face. Money shot."

"If I know my girl, she reaches out—"

"To lick it off?"

"She'll want to keep your cock inside her mouth, she's that kind of slut."

"But I won't let her. I'll come all over her face and tell her, you're so desperate for my cock baby and you haven't even had it inside you yet."

He tells her. He tells her how he's going to fuck Alyssa doggystyle head down tits bouncing every which way as he fucks her harder and harder and nominally he's lost in his fantasy by this point but at the same time he's acutely aware of every rustling noise on the other end of the line and Alyssa's bucking on his cock so tight so wet screaming as he pulls her hair and slaps her ass but it isn't really Alyssa anymore.

"And she'll be saying in that whiny little voice 'Sebastian...Sebastian...fuck me Sebastian...'" A bad voice imitation. He's stroking himself furiously now, close to coming, and when she says that he thinks he's going to lose control and then thirty seconds later he knows he's lost it for real—

"Kathryn...Kathryn...Kathryn..."

* * *

A/N: Sorry this update took so long, it's because I'm actually really terrible at writing phone sex, or detailed sex scenes in general. I don't know how many chapters the story will be. By the way, credit for the journal excerpt goes to Ryan Phillippe, who apparently wrote the lines in the journal that was used in the film.


	4. High School, Pt IV - Summer Interlude

And nothing comes of it. Because Sebastian Valmont is a conquerer of girls, and as for Kathryn, she didn't get to where she is in life by listening to what boys say when they come. But they call each other less, a change so imperceptible he's never quite sure it isn't just a matter of Kathryn being busy with school and college applications and being so goddam perfect all the time, which probably does make some heavy demands on one's schedule but he knows that he cannot ask.

Shouldn't even be thinking like this. She was a conquest, okay. Move on.

He fucks Alyssa, her flexible body (gymnastics since age 5, she tells him) writhing under him nimbly, tits ass everything just so fucking perfect he feels nothing. When was the last time he did feel something? He doesn't know. Looking back he's struck by how many times she asked him "Do you love me?" "I'm the only one?" "Swear that you're mine" etc., as if she knew, in the back of her mind, that this was a bad idea.

"I love you," he told her, because that was what it took.

…

She picks up the phone, puts it down again, thinks about doing a line of coke, decides not to this time. Her heart is beating too fast. She forces herself to concentrate. Just do it, will all the other thoughts out, put on the mask, like at Mother's charity parties. To calm herself, she thinks about sex. Not with him. She brings to mind the black guy she's doing it with behind his girlfriend's back, embittered by Upper East Side racism—she tries not to talk to him too much outside of bed because it'll always come up—fucking her at her house afterschool just before her mother comes home, saying each and every time, "I know I shouldn't." That's it. Her other hand floats almost unconsciously to the phone and she dials the number.

"Hey Seb."

"Yeah?"

"Do you know yet what you're doing this summer?"

"You mean who."

"I mean what. Unless you've become some nice Catholic girl's pussy-whipped boyfriend and failed to tell me."

"Plans for this summer...hmm. My alcoholic, impotent father and gold-digging whore of a mother have decided they want to 'repair their marriage.' They're jetting off to Oahu and leaving me a big pile of cash to play with. I was thinking of blowing it all in Vegas. Yourself?"

"I'm doing this summer college-prep thing at Princeton."

"Sounds fun."

"The courses are okay, but the rules are complete bullshit. No alcohol or drugs, no leaving after lights out or without staff, also no trading cards or Dungeons and Dragons for some reason. Doesn't matter though, I've spoken to the girl who's going to be my RA. She'll fix everything for me in return for access to Blaine."

"What in the fuck are you talking about?"

"Mother's taking the opportunity to go to Monte Carlo while I'm there. She's hoping to meet a new rich husband to sponge off of without me outshining her. I don't know how clear I can make it."

Shit, Sebastian thinks. Is she for real.

He didn't think anything would change. He thought he would fuck her again, but he didn't think anything would _change_.

"Are you there?"

"Yeah. Fuck Vegas."

"You wouldn't have liked it there anyway. Too many middle-class people."

"I know, Kat."

…

The summer is unbearably hot like all New York City summers. They don't care. Everyone else of their social class has fled for the Hamptons or the Vineyard. They take taxis everywhere, take in Broadway shows with the tourists and movies in the park with the native plebs. Kathryn still refuses to sleep with him. Except for one night in the bathroom at a shitty dive bar, loud rock music pounding in all around them, the sex hurried and frantic, not that good really, and what Sebastian remembers later of that night is primarily that Kathryn acted drunk but he suspected that in truth she was stone cold sober. If she was...he doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to think. It's summer, just enjoy it. Drop in on random shops and buy her things you know she'll never wear at school, jewelry, see-through underwear, whatever. And never think about _why_ you're doing this, any of it, this holing up in New York City where nobody is and where the heat burns you, every day.

She fucks him once. In the bathroom, loud music all around them so no one will hear, she hustles him in and pushes him back against the sink and takes off his clothes without a word. She knows him by now, his body and what it can do, and it is what she wants. She is not supposed to want this, is supposed to want a boyfriend who will be tender and attentive to her and give her presents and show up on her arm at parties, declare his love to her often and in public, while he meanwhile is supposed to try to stay single and fuck her somewhere secret while calling her nothing but bitch whore slut and then go away quickly and brag about her to his friends. It is a war, and she is sick of it. And so she fucks him the way she fucks the men in her other life, deep in the night, classes all done with, running on almost zero sleep and using coke to compensate, but needing this more than sleep, more even than coke, more than anything. And yet at the same time she senses the wrongness of it. To fuck a stranger is one thing, but this one knows about her chemical addictions _and_ her worries over grades, her hatred for her mother, the evil she's done to her friends. They even have nicknames for each other. God. She thought that by the end of junior year she'd done it all: had threesomes, gotten her ass flogged by some guy in a ridiculous leather outfit...

...and yet this feels to her like something strange, a stupid outdated concept half-remembered from her mother's lectures and the church she got dragged to a few times as a little girl. It feels like sin.

…

He takes her to Coney Island the day before her mother comes back from Monte Carlo. They sit together on the Ferris wheel and then walk on the beach, talking and sometimes glancing at the moon over the water. It is a cliché. They talk about reputations, the last girls he'll fuck while still in high school, the speech she'll make in front of the school if she can keep her position as valedictorian. "Just tell them they're all a bunch of hypocritical conceited assholes," he tells her. She laughs. "But you and me are the best at it," she says. He lifts her chin up to face him and kisses her on the lips, like he's done before too many times to count, to girls who all thought it was so romantic. She closes her eyes and eases into the kiss, puts her arms around his waist and grabs onto him tightly as he runs his hands over the navy blue bikini bottom that barely covers her sexy petite ass, then under it. She pushes him away—not in public, idiot. He suggests somewhere more private, like his place, or hers, or a hotel room, whatever, she refuses to even consider the idea, and soon they're back into one of their stupid arguments. But on the taxi ride home she sidles up close to him and says softly, "Sebastian? Don't be mad at me."

"I'm not," he says. It comes out as an exasperated sigh. But then he turns to look at her and there's something so sincere in her face that all of his remaining anger really does melt away. He takes her hand.

She says to him even more softly, "I just want to thank you. For an amazing summer. It really meant a lot to me to be able to spend it like this, with you." And he kisses her again—it seems like the thing to do—but as he does he feels an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, a sensation of unease he cannot name.

The summer is over soon enough. Cold winds and falling leaves and classes and parents and friends. She doesn't speak to him once senior year.


End file.
